Online Catalogs

Breeding on OCLC library automation strategy

This post is extracted from an article written by Marshall Breeding in the May 2009 issue of Smart Libraries Newsletter.
Marshall Breeding writes that OCLC's announcement of its new library automation services "stands as a large milestone in the evolution of library automation." Here is an early...

Measuring My First CIL

Lee Rainie from the Pew Internet and American Life Project gave Friday's keynote address. He's a very lively speaker—mentally I started referring to him as Peppie le Pew—and he has lots of data and facts about how Millenials (those born between 1982 and 2000) think, use the Internet, search for information, communicate and form communities, and believe in themselves and the technologically and...

How OPACs Suck, Part 1: Relevance Rank (Or the Lack of It)

I recently wrote about NCSU adding a search engine to its online catalog. But after talking to librarians who asked me, “So what did they get for doing that?” I realized I need to back-pedal and explain how a search engine makes an online catalog easier to use (or, as Andrew Pace puts it, "Why OPACs Suck").
Cream Rising to the TopI'll start today with relevance ranking—the building block of...

The Revolution Will be Folksonomied

It was exciting to read Teresa's post about the North Carolina State University (NCSU) Libraries' catalog. This achievement represents a magnificent step forward for integrated library systems, and the NCSU Libraries catalog's rich combination of search and browse, combined with its powerful search engine, stand in silent rebuke to the piteously clunky library systems most libraries pay dearly...

From Swine to Divine: NCSU Unveils New Online Catalog

If you attended LITA's Forum in San Jose last September, you may have heard this analogy: "Making minor changes to library catalog systems is like putting lipstick on a pig." Attributed to Andrew Pace—head of systems at North Carolina State University (NCSU) Libraries (Raleigh), "Technically Speaking" columunist for American Libraries (and former Smart Libraries Newsletter contributor), and...